Paul Staley has this Perspective on the ins and outs, literally, of this holiday season.
The holidays we observe in this last quarter of the year are, to some extent, about scrambling up the relationship between the outside and the inside.
Halloween kicks things off by letting what is usually on the inside go outside instead. Trick or treating means kids are out at an hour when they would normally be inside, and costumes are a display of something that might otherwise stay hidden: an alter ego, or alternate identity, or a personal creative spark.
On Thanksgiving we flip it in the opposite direction. Now the external comes inside. A large array of food is prepared and over the course of a few hours we set about putting it inside our bodies. If our home and table can accommodate them, we invite in friends and colleagues to share in the bounty.
Christmas continues in the same vein. And, on top of that, we drag trees inside our houses and tell our children that their presents were delivered by a man who broke into our house by coming down something that was built to expel smoke.